


Paper Bag

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Developing Relationship, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Mental Health Issues, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 21:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12177138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: She is upset in the most literal sense. Rigid when she ought to be loose limbed. Coiled and ready when she ought to sprawled, heavy, and blissfully unaware. She is Up.Set.





	Paper Bag

**Author's Note:**

> Feeling more than a bit of a mess myself, and I love this song. Set early Season 5.

Hunger hurts, and I want him so bad, oh it kills

'Cause I know I'm a mess he don't wanna clean up

I got to fold 'cause these hands are too shaky to hold

Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love

—Fiona Apple, “Paper Bag” 

 

* * *

 

It's nothing in particular. The thing that tugs her bolt up right. It’s 2:36 AM this time. Later than some nights, earlier than others, and it's bad. A bad night. She knows that right away, even though it's nothing in particular. 

She shoves uselessly at blankets, leaden and damp with sweat. An unbearable weight that clutches and tangles and drags at her prickling skin. Her breath scrapes in and out. Fast, shallow. She’s dizzy with it, forehead to knees. There's a salt-sick taste on her tongue and a thick sensation at the back of her throat. It's awful. It always is, but it will linger tonight. 

She knows that, too. Right away, she knows she is simply, suddenly, irrevocably awake. She's upset in the most literal sense by the inversion of how things should be. She's rigid when she ought to be loose limbed. Coiled and vigilant when she ought to sprawled, heavy, and blissfully unaware. She is _Up. Set._  

The thought might amuse her in daylight. The decomposition of words. Atomization and proof positive that  her mind has learned to bend in his direction, even when she's only just blinking her way back to life. 

It might amuse her some other night. It might end with her waking him. It's happened before. She's come out the other side _annoyed._ She's woken like this on nights when the fact of him at her side undoes the knot right away, and she comes right out of it, fierce and smiling. 

Those nights, she wakes him. She jostles and shakes and prods and wonders right out loud. She wonders right out loud— _God, Castle, how can you possibly sleep that hard?_ And even out of a dead sleep, he has things to say about her word choice. 

That's how it goes some nights. But not tonight. 

Tonight she's upset, and it launches her body into motion. It drives her from the sheltering warmth of the bed. Away from him. It drives her deep into the dark, limbs clumsy, fingers numb and slow. 

She's silent, even like this. Especially like this. She's silent even as she tries to name it in the confines of her busy, buzzy, frantic mind. The dead simple thing that jerks at strings she's worked hard to snip. 

She wants to _know_ it. She's tried. She _is_ trying all the goddamned time. But the grim truth is it's nothing in particular. 

It's everything.

It's darkness and hope and the fragile things she's come to cherish so quickly. She's come to _need_ , and there's no part of her that's equipped for that. _Need_.  

It's the still-slithering tendrils of a nightmare. She snatches that part out of the writhing mess. She stops. Physically, in the dark of 2:36 AM, she grits her teeth and names it, but it's no good tonight. Tonight a name—a word decomposed—is nothing to the phantom ache of  scars that burn her sweat-slick skin and drill right down into her bones. 

It's no good with the smothering press of too-real threats. The handful of digits and a bluff. All  that stands between her and real loss. 

Loss.  

The word overwhelms her, and she's _tired._ She's so worn out with the work this is. The constant struggle to remind herself that she ought to live. That she _wants_ to live and it matters if she doesn't. It matters. 

She reaches out for him. Half on her feet, half sprawled, she reaches for the strong curve of his shoulder and the vulnerable line of his ribs trailing down. She reaches for him and falls short. Pulls up short. 

She's so worn out from the fucking mess she is. The fucking mess she keeps on being.

She turns away. Back toward the dark of the room, and she has her jeans on already. Sort of has them on. The waist gapes at the open fly, because she's on to something else necessary. Something else she has to have to make good her escape. Phone. Charger. Socks. Shirt. Jacket. Keys, and are her boots by the door, or . . . Did she undress herself, or did he  . . . ?

"Kate?" The bedside light snaps on. His side, not hers. 

There's a her side.

There's a side of his bed that is hers, and a part of her that lingers. A part of her that lives here, even when she's running from nothing in particular. The fact of it brings a sharp spike of anxiety. An itch that's deep and black, burrowing beneath her skin. She can't understand why she isn't gone already. Why she's still here subjecting him to this. 

"You're up," he mutters. 

His features are heavy with sleep. With worry burdensome enough that he can barely stay propped on his own elbow, and something whispers in her ear. _That's it._ The tired creases carved deep into his forehead. The taut, wary horizontal of a mouth that should always smile. That's meant to smile. It's the fact that she's the one who's done this to him. Who does this to him all the damned time. That's what it is. 

"I have to go." She's pulling on a sock. She's buttoning her jeans and struggling with a sleeve turned stubbornly inside out. She's clutching her phone tight. 

"A body?" he asks. 

He's not really asking.

If he were, he'd be swinging his feet to the floor, even now. He'd be yawning and stretching and grumbling like a bear. He'd be in motion. Following her like he does. That's how it would be if he were really asking. 

She hates him a little for it. The out he gives her that's not an out all. She's going, and he knows damned well . . . 

"Not a body." The words exhaust her. The admission and the effort of making it.  Her arms drop to her sides. Her fingers unfurl and the phone disappears into dark folds of down and linen. "Me." 

He doesn't respond. His hand creeps across the bed. She flinches. Draws back, but it's not her he's reaching for. He finds the power cable snaking across the hills and valleys of her pillow. He fiddles with the end. Coils and uncoils one loop around his thumb. 

 _He touches things,_ she thinks, frowning hard. Working at the keen edge of disappointment that it’s not her he meant to reach for. She hates herself more than a little. Hates feeling desperate and stupid in the low bedroom light. She hates being a mess. 

"You?" he says finally.  

He _asks_ this time, and doesn't it fucking _figure_ that it's a wholly innocent question? That he's just . . . _asking_ , when she's spinning out. 

"I'm just . . ." The knots in her shoulders clench tight. Tighter, and it's enough to lift her arms. Enough to spread her palms wide. It's a comprehensive, _final_ kind of gesture. "I have to go." 

"Do you?" He slumps back to the pillow. It mashes his cheek hard enough to hide one eye. She wonders if might be the point of it. If he thinks hiding is the right thing. The necessary thing when it's the middle of the night and she's a mess. "You're upset." 

It's a statement of fact that hangs in the air between them. Fighting words in isolation. Out of context. They would be if they weren't so quiet. Could be if they weren't so tentative. Will be, if she goes on like this. If she lets them. 

"I'm _upset_." She’s screwing this up. She yanks viciously at her zipper. Snatches up the phone, cable and all, as though he's trying to take it from her. 

He's not, though. He's keeping his hands quite deliberately to himself. He's setting the cable gently down and pulling his arms in. Coiling his ever-busy fingers into careful fists. 

They're not fighting words. 

"So you have to go?" 

He shifts in place. Slides one arm under the pillow and presses himself closer to it. Deeper into the bed. He looks up at her, curious. Honestly curious, and it breaks her heart that he's asking. That he's trying to figure this out, too. He's trying to do the right thing, and he loves her, but there's no hope of that. The right thing. There's no hope, but he doesn't seem to know that.   

”It’s ok. . . " He soldiers on. Trails off. He frowns, even as the words creep out to fill the silence. He _scowls_ , actually. He corrects himself. "I mean, obviously it's ok. That's not . . . It's not like I get to _say_ what's ok, and I'm not. Saying. I wouldn't try to or want to say what's ok. I just . . ." He turns his face into the dark folds of linen. He growls, frustrated.

He's screwing it up, too. He thinks he is, anyway, and she almost laughs. Almost, and then she's not almost laughing at all. She's fighting back sudden, shocking tears and nearly gasping out loud at the heart-soreness of it all. The heart-soreness of wanting. 

She wants . . .  So much. So many things. To be better. To be any good at being with him. At being in the world. At not being a mess. She _wants._  

She doesn't have the words, as usual. She has no way to give voice to it all, and that's another kind of mess. One that stills her. Drops her hands to her sides and makes her breathe through it. She closes her eyes and it's all there. 

Desire. Ambition. Yearning. It's a warm, throbbing, _good_ kind of mess that pushes and pulls at the other one. The tangled, pulsing, sick-making dark thing that woke her. She wants, and it lightens and unsnarls, a little bit. A little bit. 

"Kate?" he says softly. Asks softly, and she answers with stillness. Cessation of motion.  She gives into gravity. She sinks back to the bed. Her phone slithers down the slope of her thigh, the cable trailing after it.   

"You'll feel better if you go?" His fingers are warm around hers, and she isn't sure how that happened. If he reached for her, or she reached for him. He's waiting. Searching her face carefully. _So_ carefully.  "I wouldn't." He goes on when she doesn't, his voice is soft to the point of unwilling. The words pile up, and he looks a little bit miserable. "If _you_ go, I definitely won't feel better, but that's not . . .  I mean, if I were . . . when I _am_ . . . upset. Which I'm not. I mean, hardly ever. But if I am . . . going doesn't help." His mouth snaps shut. He looks panicked. Frustrated. Blushing and curious and eager and . . . resigned.  "But you'll feel better. If you go." 

He's not asking now. He's saying and realizing and living with it. Learning to live with it, and  he shouldn't. Not always. She doesn't want him to live with it. Not always, though sometimes. She can imagine sometimes wanting him to, and the sick feeling starts to rise again.  

"I don't know," she tells him. Her voice feels rusty. Unreliable, even though it's truth in progress. A realization she's just had—she's still having—and another follows hard on its heels. "I'm not good at . . . feeling better." That's truth in progress, too, but not the whole of it. She thinks of last summer, and it's not the whole truth. "Castle." She won't look at him. She won't let him do the work. Not this time. "Rick." Her gaze settles on him. The weight of his name, and that feels like something. "Going is the only thing . . ." 

She swallows against panic. A sharp, sudden wave at the thought of being alone. Of rattling around her apartment with nothing for company but her own bad habits. Her own worst impulses. She topples toward him. She burrows into the pillow. Into folds of down and dark linen. She closes her eyes tight. 

"I've only ever gone," she says, soft enough she can't be sure it's out loud.

He's holding both her hands now. She's holding both of his. They're close enough she can't see him even with her eyes open. Can't see anything _but_ him, either, and her heart pounds loud. Blood rushes in her ears. She's _upset_. 

"I'm a mess, Castle." She's near tears again. Ugly, frustrated ones this time. It's appalling, but it's not, too. It's freeing, scary, heady. It's blissful and black and spiraling. It's ok— _better_ —because he's holding on tight, and she is too. "This is a _mess,_ and it's me, and the only thing I know how to do is go . . ." 

"So stay this time." His lips press into her temple. Into the curve of her cheek and the corner of her jaw. "Maybe this is how we do better? Just try . . ." 

"Stay," she echoes. 

She lets him turn her sleeve right side out and slip the shirt over her head. She lets him undo all she's done. She comes to rest on her side of the bed. His hand rests on her hip, hers presses hard to the thump of his heart, slow and steady. She sees the glow of the clock, an indistinct blur beyond the expanse of his shoulders. It doesn't matter what it says. She closes her eyes against it.  

"This time, I'll stay." 

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I was ready to post this more than a week ago, then I kept poking at it. Posting before I work it into nonexistence.


End file.
